The following is the statement issued by the Central Trade Unions on January 17, 2015 The central trade unions asserted in the pre-budget consultation meeting with the finance minister on January 17, 2015, that the government should ensure ‘Ease of life and livelihood of the common people”, “not merely ease of doing business”. All the eleven central trade unions submitted a joint memorandum which basically underlined trade unions’ view and proposals for directional change in the pro-corporate pro-big-business economic policy regime which landed the country’s economy into a mess in the last few decades. They spoke in one voice on the disastrous consequences even during the period under the new government at the centre, on the declining standard of living of the common people and also on employment generation, downslide in wages, mass scale contractorisation etc. The CITU was represented in the meeting by its General Secretary, Tapan Sen. Sen reminded the finance minister that in the same pre-budget consultation meeting held on June 6, 2014, trade unions urged upon the reversal of the economic policies followed by the UPA government which according to the finance minister himself, landed the country’s economy in the mess. He has many times made such comments both inside and outside parliament. But in the process of the last eight months it became clear that his government has been pursuing the same brand of policies more aggressively, bulldozing the opinions of the common people, trade unions and various mass organisations and also bulldozing the parliament through ordinance route. He reminded the minister that the government felt it an emergency to promulgate ordinances for denationalisation of the coal industry, for tampering the Land Acquisition Act for the benefit of big corporates and land-mafias, but no emergency was felt for implementing the consensus tripartite recommendations of successive Indian Labour Conferences for enhancing minimum wage to Rs 15000 or giving the anganwadi, mid-day-meal, ASHA and other scheme workers the right of minimum wage and social security benefit or ensuring same wage as regular workers for the contract workers for doing the same work. And while neglecting these issues involving millions of working people, slogans are being chanted “sabka saath–sabka vikas” in the media, particularly when in the span of last two years including eight months of this NDA rule, wage levels in rural india have taken a drastic and dramatic plunge. During the same period, MNREGA expenditures declined by 3 and 36 per cent as per Mid Year Economic Analysis published by the government. The same document said the same trend of deceleration of wage would continue. Side by side, the urban wage-levels are being suppressed to the level of hardly 2.5 per cent of the total cost of production on the average. This is quite natural since the government is busy in promoting “ease of doing business” complementary to which is the condition of creating severe un-ease and miseries in the lives and living conditions of the working people. If this trend continues, the NDA government’s so-called dream of an all round development will remain a mere rhetoric propagated by the minister in public domain through the media to deceive the people and that can never materialise in the face of increasing poverty, declining purchasing power of the common people and shrinking domestic market making, thus making any investment unsustainable. The government must change the direction of its policies, reversing its project of privatisation, of dismantling labour laws and frittering away natural resources. Among the trade union leaders present in the meeting were Brijesh Upadhyay and Surendran (BMS), D L Sachdeva (AITUC), S Q Jama (INTUC), R K Sharma (AIUTUC), Shanmugan (LPF) Monali (SEWA), Ashok Ghosh (UTUC), S P Tewari (TUCC), Santosh Roy (AICCTU) and S D Tyagi (HMS).